


a girl worth fighting for.

by patriciaselina



Series: Once Upon A Time In Iwatobi [4]
Category: Free!
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Disney, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Mulan (1998) Fusion, Baby Dragon, Crossdressing, Crushes, F/M, Muscle fangirling, Muscles, Secret Crush, Secret Identity, Shirtless, Shirtless Rei is the best distraction OK, Soldiers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-19
Updated: 2014-07-19
Packaged: 2018-02-09 11:37:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1981491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patriciaselina/pseuds/patriciaselina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kou’s throat goes dry, her breathing just <em>stops</em>, and, from where he is hiding in the collar of her armor, Nagisa has to <em>lick her nape</em> to snap her attention back to the present. She’ll have to scold him on how gross he’s being later; for now, the General is waiting for her to answer. The <em>shirtless</em> General. The sooner she gets this over with, the sooner he’ll be gone from her line of sight.</p><p>(Mulan AU, where Kou is the one who joins the army in place of her elder brother, injured elite soldier Rin Matsuoka.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	a girl worth fighting for.

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve always wanted to write this Rei/Kou Mulan AU for the longest time now, seriously. So have this oneshot (for now?) - hope you like it!!

_Life_ , Kou finds herself thinking, _is totally goddamned **unfair**_.

This is not something that strikes her when she takes up her brother’s sword and armor to take the place of his injured butt in the upcoming war. Nor is it something she thinks when the guardian dragon given to her by the house of Matsuoka – ‘ _Nagisa_ ’, he calls himself – turns out to be little more than a golden lizard in size. This is not even what she thinks when she almost gets into a fistfight with the soldier Nanase, over a water skin she accidentally knocked over. (Long story.)

No, this is what she thinks when she sees Rei Ryugazaki, General of the goddamned army itself, for the first time. _Up close_. Because the guy absolutely gets into her personal space, as if scrutinizing each and every detail of her face, and Kou can’t help but think that life is _totally_ playing dirty right now because _nobody_ is supposed to have muscles that _fine_ , so help her.

The new friend she made a few moments ago – Tachibana, she thinks, was his name, the one who had her and Nanase make amends – at least had the good sense to bundle up his 10-out-of-10 physique with soldier’s armor and a hell of a lot of fabric. But this guy, this life-ruiner, this plan-defacer, _General Ryugazaki_ , has the utter _gall_ to show up _shirtless_ , and it floors her. It absolutely floors her.

“I never knew that the illustrious Rin Matsuoka has a younger brother.” he says, pushing up his spectacles with one hand, the motion drawing Kou’s attention to the defined musculature of his forearm.

Kou’s throat goes dry, her breathing just _stops_ , and, from where he is hiding in the collar of her armor, Nagisa has to _lick her nape_ to snap her attention back to the present. She’ll have to scold him on how gross he’s being later; for now, the General is waiting for her to answer. The _shirtless_ General. The sooner she gets this over with, the sooner he’ll be gone from her line of sight.

“Well, yeah, he does. You can check the registry.” And Kou knows with absolute certainty that he can – the Matsuoka family registry lists down names, but not genders, and her actual honest-to-goodness name is actually _Gou_. Seeing the conscription notice tacked on their door was the one and only time she was thankful that their parents had made her a girl with a boyish name. “And he doesn’t talk about me much. I’m kind of the family disappointment – what with me skipping out on the last war, and all.”

This was, of course, a lie. Kou _had_ wanted to be in the last war – had trained all her life alongside Rin to prepare herself – but women weren’t supposed to be in the army, which, in Kou’s opinion, was a really stupid rule. Especially as she was the one who could turn the ‘ _illustrious_ _Rin_ _Matsuoka_ ’ into a whiny brat with one practiced jab with a wooden _bokken_.

“That’s interesting,” the General says, flatly, dismissing her and her small frame, fragile physique, with a single glance. “But if you prove yourself to be a disappointment as a soldier, as well, do not be surprised when – not if, _when_ – we eventually send you home.” he snaps, before walking away.

At this Kou heaves a sigh of relief – the sooner he gets his focus away from her, the better she can ensure that her secret gets kept. Because, as Nagisa kept reminding her over and over – when the truth about her gender gets out, Kou would most likely be put to death, and while Kou has come to terms with the possibility of dying in the war, she does not want to die disgracing the Matsuoka name.

This sigh of relief comes to a sudden and absolute _halt_ , however, because Kou’s treacherous goddamned mind has the _nerve_ to tell her that the view of General Ryugazaki from _behind_ is a sight to behold.

“Yeah,” Kou mutters under her breath, angrily, “tell me something I _don’t_ know.”

“Say something, sweetheart?”

“Ugh, _nothing_.”

“Honey, I know that this is _your_ journey and all…” Nagisa drawls, stretching out around her collar as much as he possibly could without drawing attention to himself, “…but if only I weren’t a dragon and also some thousand-hundred years old, I would _totally_ be all over that. Just saying.”

“It’s _hundred-thousand_. Also, I don’t want to be over, under, beside, or otherwise _near to_ ‘that’.”

“Yeah, that’s what you say, but drool is leaking outta your pretty mouth right now, Gou-chan.”

Why is this her life.

.

.

As if it weren’t enough that the first time she met him he was shirtless, the General just _has_ to go through each and every day of training shirtless too, as if the training weren’t just testing Kou’s own lackluster hand-on-hand skills, but also her hold on reason and common sense itself. Because she’s pretty sure, she’s completely, absolutely sure, that the best plan of action when it came to avoiding strikes to one’s face did _not_ entail stealing glances at one’s sparring partner’s impressive abdominals. It does not, she knows this, but she keeps doing it anyway.

But seriously, though – why is the world being cruel, why does it seem to like putting her up against General Ryugazaki? _No, not in **that** way, sheesh, mind theater, calm down for a goddamned second._ Kou knows that had she been paired up with someone else, _anyone_ else really, she would’ve at least be able to put up a fight – especially against Tachibana, who, while having a body to die for, cannot actually seem to hurt a fly.

One day, after too many instances of Kou falling head-over-feet with a single well-timed hit, the General finally has enough. “It seems that you are a disappointment in this field, as well.” he says, pushing up his spectacles, his mouth pulled in a thin line of distaste. “I suggest you return home, before you hurt yourself.”

Tears are welling up in Kou’s eyes and she _cannot_ cry, she will _not_ allow herself to cry, not when she’s gone this far without slipping.

“Gou? What happened?” Tachibana asks, when she gets back to base. While she did not cry, she couldn’t do anything about the tears blurring her vision, not when her hands are icky with mud and grass from when she had fallen onto the ground. _You are a disappointment_.

Forget about saving her country from invaders, saving her elder brother from this fate. She can’t even save herself.

“Nothing,” Kou sniffs, closing her eyes in an attempt to stem the tears. _Don’t feel_. “It just seems I’ll be leaving soon, Tachibana. Say ‘bye’ to Nanase for me.”

“Too bad,” Tachibana says, frowning. “I thought you were gonna at least try climbing that.”

‘ _That_ ’ had been the post sticking out in the middle of home base – a simple wood thing, with two golden medallions on top. Each and every one of the soldiers had tried their hand on it, and ended up slipping down onto the ground in an undignified heap – Kou _did_ want to try, it looked like a fun thing to do. But when the General’s protégée – Momotarou Mikoshiba, who once said that Kou looked cute and might-might-not be a threat to her piece of mind – ended up falling down as well, calling for his elder brother, she didn’t bother.

“Come on, Tachibana. You don’t seriously think _I_ can handle that, don’t you?” Kou says, trying to inject as much cheerful laughter in her tone, so Tachibana doesn’t hear the self-depreciation in it and end up fussing over her. “Didn’t you hear what the General said? I’m an embarrassment. If I didn’t know you better, I’d think you just wanted to see me fall down on my butt.”

“I – I didn’t!” Tachibana squeaks out, coloring predictably. For such a big guy, sometimes he acts like such a little kid. If Kou gets out of this alive, she makes a mental note to introduce him to her elder brother – looks like they’d get along, at least in that regard. “It’s just that I think you could pull it off, Gou. It’s just too bad if you’re gonna give up _now_.”

And that’s why, later that night, her brother’s horse’s reins in hand, the moon shining overhead, Kou looks up at the sky and asks herself.

_Will I really just run away from this?_

The answer, she realizes, as she clambers her way up the first few feet, had always been _no_.

.

.

“Ryugazaki, are you seeing this?”

“This better be for a good reason, Mikoshiba. It is a good half hour before my scheduled time of awakening.” Rei says, pushing up his glasses. “If this is about your little brother’s unhealthy fascination with the younger Matsuoka again, I’d rather you tell him not to bother. Not when I told him to –”

“Okay, first? No, Momotarou’s crush on Gou-kun is not _unhealthy_ , it’s _adorable_ , and he’s just like a chip off the old block, considering how I still wanna introduce myself to Matsuoka’s sister one day. And second, this has nothing to do with Momo, but it _does_ have something to do with _Gou-kun_.”

General Ryugazaki sighs, massages his temples. “Ugh. Tell me. What did Matsuoka do?” _Don’t tell me he’s **that** upset about what I told him before…the boy has persistence, and strength; if only he had the finesse._

“He didn’t burn the base to pieces, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Seijurou says, pouting childishly. “Now c’mon, c’mon, you shouldn’t miss it!”

The sight that the General sees, though he would much rather die than admit it, is nothing short of _beautiful_.

Against the soft early morning sunshine, the wooden post stands tall, gleaming and perfect with its smooth surface and unsullied state. At its peak, two golden medallions hang from a cloth ribbon – or _would_ be hanging, if not for the new addition it had somehow garnered sometime in between late night and early morning.

It’s Matsuoka, sitting on the very top of the post as if it was in his birthright to do so. There’s a smile on his face that is a touch more smug than Rei remembers his smiles to be – why yes he actually does catalogue the smiles Matsuoka throws Tachibana and Nanase, and they don’t make him feel angry _at all_ , is there something wrong with that. Looking down on them like that, his face softly backlit by the sun, Matsuoka looks like some kind of conquering deity made flesh.

Also, his legs are crossed, almost jauntily. For a boy of small stature, Matsuoka apparently has rather long legs. Why did this become a thing that Rei can’t help but _notice_.

Despite the disparity in their vantage points, it’s obvious to see when Matsuoka sees him – his eyes widen slightly, and the smile slips clean off his face. _So it seems he really was distressed by what I said_ ,Rei thinks, his treacherous mind making notes to make an apology as soon as possible.

But then Matsuoka takes a deep breath, regains his bearings, fixes Rei with the smuggest grin he’s seen thus far – counting that of the elder Matsuoka, whose smugness almost annoyed Rei to an early grave during their last campaign – and tosses the medallions down at Rei’s feet in one elegant, fluid motion of his wrist.

It’s when Rei finds himself looking at that triumphant crimson gaze for longer than he’s supposed to, his heart thumping dully in his chest, that he realizes he’s _doomed_.

This is _not_ supposed to be happening.


End file.
